The present invention relates to apparatus for detecting current or potential generated by ionic species in a liquid sample solution.
Conductivity detection is a bulk property detection and the total conductance depends on the nature of the ions via the charge on the ion and the mobility and the concentration in a sample. The specific conductance of a solution is the sum of the concentration-mobility product of the different ions present. It is well known that equal concentrations of specific different compounds, e.g. NaCl and HCl, have vastly different specific conductance. Conductivity however responds to all ionic solutes but cannot provide a measure of total charge.
Coulometry is an analytical method for determining an unknown concentration of an analyte in a sample solution by completely converting the analyte from one oxidation state to another. Coulometry is an absolute measurement methodology and requires no calibration. However coulometry is inapplicable for a great variety of ionic species analytes, e.g., Na+ or SO42− whose redox potentials lie beyond a value where solvent breakdown occurs or, e.g., with dilute Cl−, where the redox process is not current efficient. There is no known technique that provides a measurement of the total charge present in a sample solution.
In ion chromatography, calibration is typically performed by running a response versus concentration plot, after analyzing a number of dilutions of standard samples. To analyze multiple components of interest in a sample, each of the multiple components must be calibrated. Multiple standard preparations and calibrations can be cumbersome. It would be useful to develop a simpler detection methodology for ion chromatography.
In ion chromatography, a particular detection scheme is chosen based on the properties of the analytes. For example, analysis of nitrate, bromide or iodide can be pursued by ultraviolet detection (UV) since these analytes absorb in UV. However other common ions such as fluoride, sulfate, phosphate do not absorb UV and so will not respond to direct UV detection. It would be useful in ion chromatography analysis to transform the peaks of interest if possible to a different species to facilitate detection by a chosen detection approach such as UV detection. Similarly in Mass spectrometry (MS) in the single ion monitoring (SIM) mode, the MS parameters are optimized to facilitate observation of a specific mass. This mode provides the highest sensitivity for specific ions or fragments. It would be useful to transform the peaks of interest to a form that could be detected by the MS in the SIM mode.